 Well, my name is TJ Dunovan. I'm the Vermont Attorney General. I am incredibly pleased to be at the Vermont Chamber of Commerce, my good friend Betsy Bishop. Thank you for having us. And here joined by so many other friends, Kerry Brown, on the Vermont Commission for Women. Emily Adams from the Civil Rights Office, who was the director of this video that we're going to talk about. I want to acknowledge Jay Barton from WCAX and the great work that they did in partnership in collaboration with helping us develop this video. I want to acknowledge Abby Lever from the Civil Rights Unit in my office as well. My good friend, Tabitha Paul Moore is here, who was a tremendous moderator in this video and in other venues that we work together with and many others, including, I'm going to have you guys introduce yourself. Oh, Hannah Indra, interning with Emily. But you are a? Law student. At Columbia. But more importantly than Columbia Law School, she's from Huntington, Vermont and wants to come back to the state of Vermont. And then? I'm Holly Margulius. I'm a student at South Burlington High School. Unbelievable. You're going to stand the state of Vermont. At least for another year. At least for another year. At least for another year. Till you finish high school. And then, of course, Josh Diamond, who is the chief deputy of the Attorney General's Office is here as well. When I started as Attorney General, I talked about helping small businesses in our state. Small businesses are the backbone of Vermont. And when you go around and have the privilege of talking to small business owners like we do, I'm amazed at how hard these men and women work to provide for their family, to give back to their community, to be civic and community leaders. And the fact of the matter is these small business owners are exactly as they sound. They're small. These small businesses in Vermont don't have in-house counsel. They don't have compliance officers. They don't have lawyers on retainers. These are not big corporations. These are mom-and-pop shops in Vermont doing the best they can to run a business, raise a family and stay in this state. And from the Attorney General's perspective, I've always said that the best form of public safety is a good job. And in order to create that vibrant and safe community for all of us, we have to create a culture of compliance. Here's the bottom line. The legal system's confusing. We got a lot of rules and regulations in this state. And we can have a debate about that, but from my perspective as Attorney General, we wanna create that culture of compliance by giving people, the men and women who run these businesses in the state, the opportunity to comply with the law or providing easily understandable, accessible tools so people understand their legal obligations in order to fulfill and satisfy their obligations of the law. That's about creating the culture of compliance. That's why we created other tools such as guidance on, how do you hire your first employee? How do you comply with ban the box legislation? And that's why we did this video that we created an effort to raise awareness about what employer's legal obligations are in the workplace regarding sexual harassment. We know this, that sexual harassment exists. And we have an obligation to create an environment in every workplace, in every business, in every place in this state that is safe, that is healthy, that is welcoming. And we know that we have an obligation to inform employers who wanna do the right thing, who wanna create those workplaces an easily understandable, accessible tool so they understand what their obligations are under the law. We know people are busy. We know people are working hard. We know, as I said, they don't have in-house lawyers. So that's why we asked the great director, Emily Adams, to create this video about what the legal obligations are under Vermont law regarding sexual harassment in the workplace. We hope that this video, which you're gonna hear a little bit about, which is about 20 minutes long, is gonna help ensure that Vermont workers are provided a safe and healthy workplace by educating and providing guidance to those small businesses, as I said, who don't have a human resource department. So what is the employer's obligation under Vermont law? All Vermont employers have an obligation to ensure that a workplace is free of sexual harassment. The law requires all employers to adopt a policy against sexual harassment, and this policy must also detail a complaint mechanism that's available to all employees. So this video was created in response not only to the issues that are going on in our state and in our country, but also in response to an expansion to Vermont's sexual harassment laws during the 2018 legislative session, which went into effect last July. This expansion protects all workers, contractors, interns, and those otherwise engaged in their working relationship from sexual harassment in the workplace. So as we continue to build that culture of compliance, the Attorney General's office is committed to working with small businesses. Businesses, small businesses in this state, as I said, are the backbone. We need to help them fulfill their obligation under the law, creating that safe and healthy workplace environment by informing people in understandable ways what this incredibly complicated legal system sometimes doesn't do. That is to say, here's your obligation. This is how you satisfy it. This is how you fulfill it. That's gonna protect people. It's gonna create a culture of compliance and it's gonna make Vermont the best place to live, to work, and to raise a family by working together, not waiting for people to violate the law and then saying, you're wrong, we're gonna hurt you, we're gonna take your money from your hard earned businesses, but it's simply saying to them, we trust you. We know you wanna do the right thing. We know you're busy. We know you may not have the tools or the resources. So we're simply saying to you, here it is. Here's a tool that can help you, can help employees, and can help our state. That's why we did this video today on the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace. So with that, let me turn it over to Carrie Brown from the Vermont Commission on Women. Carrie. Thank you so much, Attorney General Donovan. Thanks for the tip of shift and the Chamber of Commerce for hosting us here. And I just wanna express my appreciation for this tool that's out there now, this video. I think it's really gonna make a big difference to a lot of people. So I'm at the Vermont Commission on Women and we are an independent nonpartisan state agency that provides education and research and resources. We also help people directly when they contact us. Oftentimes it's because they're not really sure where else to turn. And so we hear from a lot of women who have stories about how sexual harassment is making it difficult or impossible to continue doing their jobs. And some of the stories are pretty disturbing. For instance, the woman whose coworker was making overt sexual comments to her and then asked if he could have photos of her breasts. And then when she told her boss about it, she wasn't believed and she ended up losing her job. Or someone else whose boss actually touched her inappropriately and when she reported it, she was demoted, moved to a less desirable department and then ultimately was offered six months of pay if she would just quietly leave on her own. And so these are women who are facing really untenable choices at work and we are committed to providing whatever resources we can to help them know what their rights are and to help them respond to this. But we also hear from employers all the time who are looking to find out what their obligations are, what they need to do to follow the law, what kind of policies they need to have in place. They're also looking for just best practices. So it's one thing to be compliant with the law and we wanna make sure that everybody is. But then there's also a whole lot more that goes into making your place a really great place to work. And we hear from employers who are starting a new business, they're just setting something up where they realize that they're not sure if their policies are in alignment with the law and so they're looking for help in coming up to speed on that. And so that's where this video really is gonna come in helpful because it's a way to just spend 20 minutes just watching this, it's in a question and answer format so you can really kind of think about how does this apply to me? And it's a good starting point and then there's plenty of resources available from the Attorney General's office and from all over who that may be able to help with this. So I'm really pleased that we were invited to be a part of this and I'm also pleased that this is part of a larger collaboration that we have ongoing with the Attorney General's office and with the Human Rights Commission. That's gonna be a public education campaign about sexual harassment and work related discrimination. And so look for that in the future. There will be a website that will serve as kind of a one stop resource as well as an ongoing education program to make sure that everybody knows their rights and that everyone's rights are protected and that no one ever has to face that impossible choice of do I just put up with harassment or do I leave my job? Thank you, Carrie. Thank you. Thank you, Carrie. Next, I'd like to ask Betsy Bishop to say a few words. Betsy. Thank you. I think this is a really important effort when this bill was working its way through the legislature in 2018, the Vermont Chamber supported it. We think it's important to expand this to volunteers, interns, independent contractors, those types of folks and I'm really eager and encouraged to be part of the education initiative. I think what the Attorney General said in his opening statement is so accurate. Our small businesses aren't loaded up with HR directors and lawyers and a lot of staff to help them. They want to obey the law. They think they know what the laws are but they often don't know all of them or all the fine details. So I look forward to participating with the Attorney General's Office and the Commission on Women to help be that point of dissemination or one point of dissemination and really help get not only the video which I have had a chance to watch and it is done very well and very helpful to get sort of that question and answer piece through. It's something that can be watched as an individual employee or it could be incorporated into a small business training. And as I thought about this and the launching of this video, I really thought about as the Vermont Chamber ourselves, we have 15 employees here. So we are very typical of many small businesses. We don't have non-staff general counsel or anything. So in preparation for this, I said, boy, let me take a look at that employee manual. What does it say? And it was, I've been here for 10 years so I got that employee manual 10 years ago. We did do a refresh about three years ago so it wasn't totally foreign to me. And I knew that there was something in it about sexual harassment. But so I looked at that and I was like, oh, that's interesting. But then it made me think about how many small employers have done that part and have done a good job with that. Maybe some haven't done that and might need some help with templates or best practices like Carrie said, and really looking forward to having that one-stop shop where we can refer people to. And then thinking about the other part of that is, well, giving somebody the handbook and having them sign it and then going to work is great, but what is that ongoing education piece? So I think we are looking forward to partnering in this effort, working with other chambers and other business organizations around the state. So thank you for all your work, putting it together, everybody. And we look forward to being a partner. Thank you. Thanks, Betsy. I wanna turn the podium over to Emily Adams who's a tremendous attorney in our Civil Rights Division and really took this project on her own with, of course, the help of Abby Lever and others, but really drove this process. In addition to doing all the legal work, she wrote the script. She's a director. She's a producer. She is a person of many talents and Emily, I wanna thank you for your hard work. We talked about this earlier. I feel very strongly, you know, when we talk about how do you deliver legal services, it can no longer be just a reactionary business where we wait for something bad to happen. We really have to be much more proactive, much more engaged in the community, much more collaborative with our partners in the community to deliver legal services, which is information. And start at the premise that most people wanna do the right thing. Yes, people do bad things and we don't hold them accountable, but most people wanna do the right thing. They just need the information. That's how we're redefining how we deliver legal services in the state of Vermont in the 21st century. And Emily, I wanna thank you for your leadership and for bringing that forward. And say a few words about the video that you produced and directed. All right. Thank you, TJ. Well, I think you said, you know, a lot of what needs to be said about this important educational tool. But I think what we see every day in the CRU are really tough and complex situations often regarding sexual harassment and often frankly, not meeting that high legal standard that the definition under the law actually requires for something to be sexual harassment. And so one of the things we thought about in creating this video was what other tools can we give employers about how to handle those types of complaints when they come in the door so that they don't end up with a situation where this is in fact a violation of the law. And I'm really proud of our team that got together to work on this. This has been a long project, probably about a year in the works and the team stuck in there. And so thank you all. And I hope that this is a useful tool that folks can use moving forward. All right. Thank you. And I know our moderator, Tabitha is here, but I do want to acknowledge some of the other participants, in addition to Tabitha Paul Moore, who's the president of the Rutland branch, the NAACP, Dean Shirley Jefferson from Vermont Law School. She's the Associate Dean of Student Affairs and Diversity. Of course, Carrie Brown from the Executive Director of Vermont Commission on Women. Where's Jay Barton? Jay Barton, I want to acknowledge and thank WCAX for providing not only your technical assistance, your expertise, but the production of producing this video because, as Betsy said, it is a 20-minute video, but it's got to be delivered in a way that people, it's going to have credibility and bringing that credibility from your production team. And I know that you were kind of revising the script at the last minute with Emily. I just want to acknowledge your assistance, your help and your leadership and we owe a debt of gratitude. So thank you and to your team at CIX. Thank you. Tabitha, do you want to say anything about moderating or? No. Okay. All right, so with that, any questions? Where can we see the video? That's a great question. That's a great question. Where's the video? I believe it will be linked in a press release shortly. It is housed on our YouTube channel, but- The AG's office is a YouTube channel. I just learned this myself. Me too. Me too. Explain what we do. I know. I don't know, Lauren, if there's anything to add on that. So it will be linked in a press release that will be sent out shortly after the conference and it will be accessible through our office's website as well. Are there plans to put this on the state's website so that business can come in and take a look? It'll be on our small business initiative page. Okay. And we'll certainly have a link to it on our page as well. And being that government guy, I got to ask about the dollars. How much did it cost to run this thing? Well, this is Josh. I believe everyone donated their time and resources, so it was a true team effort and a pro bono effort as they say by lawyers. Pro bono by Channel 3. Yes, sir. It's amazing. Thank you. All right. This is where- Thank you for coming. Thank you for coming. Betsy, thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you for all coming here. Let's enjoy the nice weather. Thank you.